Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes is full of sympathy for defender Tommie Hoban.
The 26-year-old was set to join the Dons on a short-term deal until the end of the campaign after Scott McKenna suffered a season-ending hamstring injury.
The Irishman has spent more than a year out with a cruciate injury suffered while on loan at the Dons from Watford.
Hoban has been a free agent since being released by the Hornets at the end of last season but looked set for a Pittodrie return with McInnes keen to bolster his defensive options for the run-in.
The defender had impressed in training ahead of Aberdeen’s match against Motherwell on March 13 before returning to London with his partner due to give birth.
He was expected to return to the Dons the following week to put pen to paper, only for Scottish football to be put into an indefinite shutdown the day the Dons were due to face Well, scuppering Hoban’s chances of a return.
McInnes said: “Tommie was up training with us before this happened.
“It was really unfortunate timing for him because we’d had discussions about bringing him on a short-term basis.
“We’d had Scott McKenna’s injury and with eight league matches and hopefully two Scottish Cup games left, we wanted that cover.
“We wanted to be best equipped we could for the final run-in, but unfortunately for Tommie this has stopped it.
“We are taking a breath with contracts and things like that at the moment.
“We only have two senior players out of contract at the moment, Greg Leigh and Tomas Cerny, but the time for that isn’t now with all the uncertainty over when we’ll be playing football again.”